A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter S

Spasmodic

Disease
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

“Spasmodic” describes something marked by spasms, sudden contractions, or irregular bursts of activity. It can suggest nervous illness, pain, interrupted breath, or uncontrolled movement.

Detailed Definition
Spasmodic refers to involuntary muscular contractions or to any action occurring in abrupt, irregular fits. In accounts of disease, it may describe coughing, trembling, convulsions, pain, or disrupted breathing, giving the body a sense of lost control. Poets use the term to represent literal illness as well as emotional shock, panic, rage, or grief that breaks through composed speech. Its uneven rhythm is especially useful in poetry, where spasmodic movement can shape a line, voice, or image into an experience of strain and interruption.
Example
Example in poetry:
Spasmodic bursts of laughter in the quiet night (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Christabel"); A spasmodic effort to break the heavy chains (Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Prometheus Unbound"); Spasmodic breathing of the exhausted runner (Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"); Spasmodic lightnings flashing across the dark (Lord Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"); Spasmodic grief weeping then falling still (Christina Rossetti, "Song")
Additional Notes
"Spasmodic" describes sudden, violent, involuntary muscle contractions—or figuratively, irregular, erratic bursts of energy and emotion. In 19th-century literary history, the "Spasmodic Poets" (a group including Alexander Smith and Sydney Dobell) were known for their intense, emotionally turbulent, and unstructured verse. Teaching this term allows instructors to introduce both the general metaphor of convulsive emotion and a specific historical poetic movement defined by dramatic, feverish intensity. Related terms include convulsive, fitful, paroxysmal, and erratic.
Also Known As
Convulsive Spastic Paroxysmal Fitful colicky
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